In announcing the arrest in the case of missing teen Sierra LaMar, Sheriff Laurie Smith raised a stir when she said 43 girls in Santa Clara County remain missing since January 2011.

“You wonder whether any of those are also abductions,” she said.

If the sheriff alarmed the public, she also caught local police agencies by surprise when on Wednesday she upped the number of missing to 63 and listed them by city. And while the number may have been technically accurate, it does not reflect the number of children in immediate danger, local police say. Most of those on the list are runaways.

“The information provided by the sheriff is utterly false,” said Sgt. Chad Gallacinao, of Gilroy, which was listed as having five missing girls. “We’re a little taken aback.”

The sheriff herself demonstrated the cloudy picture of missing children. On Friday, she said that the two girls listed as her own agency’s cases actually were runaways, who since May 1 had returned home.

Smith defended putting out the list, saying her office has “strong reason to believe our suspect (Antolin Garcia Torres) has attempted other abductions.” She asked for the public’s help in providing information. “I want to keep attention on missing children,” she said in a statement provided to this newspaper.

Although the state keeps a database of missing children drawn from police reports, there appears to be no solid data on how many of those children face serious risk and might have been abducted. What’s clear is that the vast majority of missing children nationwide have run away and many have been located — but haven’t returned home.

Behind the numbers

Smith’s list included 43 missing girls in San Jose alone. But San Jose Police Department spokesman Jason Dwyer said, “We don’t have any open at-risk juvenile cases.” Of the current cases of missing girls, which he put at 37, “All of them are runaways or believed to be runaways.”

It’s not that runaways face no risk. “When they’re out on the street and not under somebody’s care, that puts them in a very vulnerable state where they could become a victim of abduction or trafficking,” said Cindy Rudometkin of the Polly Klaas Foundation, which helps families search for missing children.

Research reveals that the sheriff’s updated list of 61 girls listed as missing includes:

A child who was taken by her mother out of the country against the father’s wishes. The dad reported the abduction to the Los Altos Police Department, which took the report and forwarded the case to the county’s child abduction unit. So officially, Los Altos has one missing girl. “The statistic stuck with us,” Agent Mark Bautista said.

Three chronic runaways in Gilroy, two of whom have returned since May 1. The third returned, but ran away again.

A Gilroy child who was taken out of the area by her mother. “It’s more of a family issue,” Gallacinao said. “There are no suspicious circumstances.”

Silvia Lee, of San Jose, who disappeared in 1995 after boarding a bus in Campbell. She was abducted, assaulted and killed; Wilbur Atcherley last year pleaded guilty to murdering her. But because her body hasn’t been found, she remains on the list of missing children. While an example of a resolved case, Lee’s is an exception to the norm of missing children.

But also on the list is Lulaida Morales Sejalbo, of Santa Clara, who was 17 when she disappeared in November 1973 — almost two decades before suspect Garcia Torres was born — sometime after she left her job at a McDonald’s. A month later, her car, with her purse, work uniform and other personal items, was found abandoned in Santa Clara.

Nationwide, of 797,500 children reported missing in a year, 115 were victims of a kidnapping by a stranger, according to a 2002 U.S. Department of Justice study. In contrast, according to a 12-year study, 2,800 children 14 and younger died of unintentional injury, such as falls or drowning.

The Sheriff’s Office didn’t call local agencies to verify the information it was releasing, spokesman Jose Cardoza said.

Still on the list

The Sheriff’s Office tallied figures from the state Missing and Unidentified Persons List as of May 1. The statistics change daily. Last year, 91 percent, or 6,128 reports, of children missing in Santa Clara County were for runaways, according to the state database. Of those, statistics show that the overwhelming majority returned, and many more were located.

But many remain on the list. Police may hear from relatives that a child has been found in another city, Dwyer said. “Or a detective may talk to them or see the kid posting on Facebook, so we know they’re alive and well, and nothing to indicate they’re a victim of a crime,” he said. “But because they’re not home and in bed they remain in MUPS” — the Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

Police were put on the spot because the numbers implied that children in their communities had vanished without a hue and cry being raised.

That’s not the case, police said. Spokeswoman Liz Wylie of the Mountain View police — who said they have just one girl who ran away from a group home and is not considered high risk — said, “We don’t allow juveniles to remain missing here.”

Sharon Noguchi covers preschool through high school for the Bay Area News Group. She's written about teen stress, high-school cheating, Common Core and teacher tenure. She also runs workshops aimed at developing high school journalists.